


like a shadow or a friend

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Asexual Character, F/M, Male-Female Friendship, Natasha has a lot of feelings, Slow Build, also Clint is a loveable human dork, she just doesn't know where to put them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 16:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9911354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: The first time Natasha notices that things at SHIELD are, well, downright weird is when a young agent stops her on the way to sparring, eagerly hustling into her path.“Are you really going to work with him?” the girl asks breathlessly, her eyes wide. “With Barton?”[the one where Natasha is asexual, Clint is his charming self, and feelings are strange things when you realize love doesn't have to be romantic.]





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt at the be_compromised promptathon: "Gender fluid Natasha. Bisexual Clint. Asexual character." I ended up diving into my asexual Natasha feelings, because Natasha is such a beautiful interesting character to be and someone whose relationships have been so defined by her past that I couldn't help but want to explore her.
> 
> _only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say_   
>  _it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere_   
>  _like a shadow or a friend_
> 
> -Naomi Shihab Nye

The first time Natasha notices that things at SHIELD are, well, downright _weird_ is when a young agent stops her on the way to sparring, eagerly hustling into her path.

“Are you really going to work with him?” the girl asks breathlessly, her eyes wide. “With Barton?”

Apparently word had traveled fast, and Natasha’s not surprised. It seemed like nothing was really much of a secret when it came to SHIELD, despite the fact that the organization itself was built on lies and crypticness.

“That’s the story,” Natasha replies, her voice dull. She almost wishes for the days when people were too scared to approach her in the halls. It hadn’t even been that long ago, but over time, she had started to blend in so much that even if she knew _she_ still had hard edges, no one else seemed to see them.

“Oh my god,” the younger agent says, sighing longingly as if Natasha has told her she’s meeting a movie star. “You’re _so_ lucky.”

“Am I?” Natasha can see the door handle to the gym and suddenly, she really wants to punch the living daylights out of something.

“Are you _kidding_?” The girl’s mouth falls open. “God, I would kill to be partnered with Clint Barton. I mean, to work with someone that good looking all the time? Just his arms --”

Natasha cuts her off by reaching forward, pulling open the door and flashing a strained smile at the girl. “I’ll keep that in mind when I’m dismantling a bomb that could kill me,” she says, abruptly pushing past her and slamming the door. She breathes out slowly in the quiet of the gym, relieved to be alone, and then her lips curve into a small smile. She may not be the person people ran away from in the halls anymore, but she could definitely still be the bitch of SHIELD if she wanted to.

“Everything okay?”

Natasha looks up and meets Clint’s eyes across the room. He’s wearing a t-shirt that’s definitely two sizes too small, his muscles bulging around the tight seams, and gym shorts that show off his tanned, scarred legs.

“Yeah. Just got ambushed on the way here. Seems like you’ve got an admirer.”

Clint scratches his head, looking puzzled. “Lemme guess -- Agent Fell?”

“The brown-haired girl with the upturned nose that looks like a pig?” Natasha asks as she crosses the floor, meeting him on the thick mat. Clint snorts out a pathetic laugh.

“Yeah, that’s her. She’s had a crush on me for like, months. And she’s not exactly subtle. She sent me a Valentine’s Day card this year with a gift card for Starbucks. It was cute, but a little sappy.”

“Oh.” Natasha’s slowly realizing that the man who she had hated from the moment he pulled her from a burning building in Stalingrad, the man who had forced her into a life of redemption and sometimes tripped over his two feet and missed meetings, the man who always showed up fifteen minutes late in the definition of a shrug emoji; this was someone people actually _liked_ , and liked enough to have sex dreams about. Because he was _Clint fucking Barton_.

And now she was going to be partnered with him.

Well, hopefully. She had gone to Fury with the request a few weeks ago, but hadn’t heard back about any kind of confirmation. “I don’t know if we can authorize this, Romanoff,” Fury had said warningly, while giving her that dad-like telltale look, the one where his eyes implied otherwise. She hadn’t pushed him on the matter. She knew people like Fury, and she knew how they worked; she had sussed out her boss from the first moment Clint brought her into his office, sopping wet and dripping lake water onto his carpet after trying to escape SHIELD by throwing herself in the river. He said one thing but always meant the other, and you just had to figure out if he was on your side or not.

“I think she was jealous.”

“She should be,” Clint agrees. “You’re hot.”

“Oh, please,” Natasha groans. “Tell me I’m hot again and I’ll punch you in the nuts. Anyway, she wasn’t talking about _me_. She seemed annoyed that I was working with _you_.”

“Do you know something I don’t?” Clint asks, frowning. “I mean, you haven’t heard from Fury, right?”

Natasha shakes her head. “No,” she says, stretching her arm over her head. “But apparently there’s rumors flying around that you’re my partner, so either everyone knows something we don’t, or everyone is going to be pissed that I’ve apparently taken you off the market.”

There’s a flash of something in Clint’s eye, something that Natasha catches before he can blink it away. It’s almost like affection, but it’s more than that. Before she can let herself dwell on it, however, he’s kicked her legs out from underneath her and has her pinned her down on the mat with one strong arm stretched across her chest.

“She can stay jealous,” Clint teases, his breath hot against her face. “She doesn’t know how I treat women when I’m alone in a gym.”

Natasha doesn’t react to that except for a grunt. They keep sparring, but she can’t stop thinking about the look she’d briefly seen in Clint’s eyes, and she can’t stop wondering why it bothers her.

 

***

 

Four days later, Fury officially sends out the memo that Natasha Romanoff is to be formally partnered with Clint Barton.

“Hey, rumor mill was right!” Clint announces, waltzing into her room at SHIELD waving the papers. He grins. “Who’s gonna be jealous of us, now?”

“I can’t imagine anyone who is going to be jealous that I get to work with someone who burps their way through the alphabet,” Natasha deadpans, and Clint pouts.

“I was bored.”

“Oh, was that all?” She smirks as his face falls. “I was kidding, Clint. I’m actually happy to give people a reason to hate me again.”

“Good,” Clint says, putting the papers down. “I mean, stuff’s gotta be officially signed, but it looks like Fury listened to you after all.” He holds out his hand for a high-five and before Natasha can stop herself, she hugs him instead. She can tell he’s surprised and to be honest, she surprises herself by being so forward. But realizes that when it comes down to it -- when it’s just her and him in a small room at SHIELD, no cameras and no authority and no one in the halls gawking that she’s working with _Clint fucking Barton, hotass of the universe_ \-- she just wants to hold him. It feels nice. It feels safe.

“Um.” Clint clears his throat as they break apart, his eyes darting to the floor. “Wanna celebrate? I know a place near my apartment. I know it’s a little out of the way, but they have really cheap beer and decent food.”

“Yeah,” Natasha decides, smiling as his eyes lift to meet hers.

Clint takes her to a place on Greene Avenue, right off of Quincy Street, called Capt. Jack’s Good Times Tavern. Natasha doesn’t stop herself from laughing out loud at the name when they finally get off the subway and walk into the bar.

“Stop judging me,” Clint grumbles, slugging her in the arm. “I don’t come here for the name. I come here for the location.”

“The aesthetic’s not so bad,” Natasha admits, leaning her elbows on the bar. Clint orders them a round of Shocktops for four dollars, and Natasha instantly takes back her judgmental words about the place. She’s used to hanging out at fancy restaurants and bars in Manhattan, where drinks were somewhere in the realm of seven or eight dollars, no matter how bad they were.

“Wait til we go on our first real mission together,” Clint says excitedly, taking a swig of his second beer. “I’m gonna take you to the seediest places when we go to those backwater towns and countries. You’re gonna love it, I promise.”

“I can’t wait,” Natasha intones, drinking a little faster. “You planning our romantic dates already?”

“Ha.” Clint slams his beer on the table and Natasha startles at the reaction, before she realizes he’s not even responding to her -- he’s paying attention to the basketball game on one of the big monitors above their heads. She watches in amusement as he raises his arms above his head in tipsy victory as the rest of the bar erupts in cheers.

“Knicks for the win!”

“You’re a Knicks fan?” Natasha finds herself filing the information away, though she’s not sure why. Maybe it would come in handy if she decided she wanted and needed to get him some sort of gag birthday gift, which was something people did around here.

Clint shrugs. “I’m a little bit of everything,” he says, leaning forward with an eyebrow waggle. Natasha swats at his face, and he leans out of the way before she can actually make contact with his skin. “Mostly, I’m a fan of whoever happens to be winning at the moment. I hate college basketball, though.”

“Mmmm.” Natasha drinks more, before realizing it’s probably a bad idea to keep downing alcohol. She’s barely eaten aside from a granola bar, she’s been up since five in the morning, and exhaustion plus the stress of sparring with some of the younger recruits is starting to catch up with her. Clint leans back in the booth and eyes her carefully.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Natasha replies. “Just tired, I think.” She smiles and shrugs. “Probably shouldn’t have been so excited to drink as many four dollar beers as I could handle.”

“Thought Russians could hold their liquor,” Clint teases, and Natasha snorts.

“Liquor, not cheap beer. Also, I can’t believe you actually buy into those movie stereotypes.”

Clint frowns, his eyes turning serious. “Look, you know if you’re really not okay, I can put you up, right? I mean, my apartment’s not that big, but I have a couch, and --”

“ _And_ , I’ll be perfectly fine getting home on my own,” Natasha interrupts. “I’m tipsy and tired, I’m not drunk.”

Clint looks a little disappointed, but gestures towards the door. “At least let me put you in a cab,” he offers. “I’d just hate for our first date as partners to end with your body on the side of FDR drive.”

Natasha narrows her eyes, her attention snapping into place. “This is a date?”

“No, I just meant --” That flash, the one she had first seen at the gym, is there again. “Not a date. Just, like, a friends date. Partners getting each other’s backs.”

“Oh.” Natasha can’t fault him for wondering if he’s overstepped his boundaries, because it’s still strange for her to work at a place that catered towards the greater good, someplace that required her to be moral and not shady, where she wasn’t trying to form relationships just so she could kill the person afterwards. “Well, then. Good.”

“Good,” Clint echoes a little too forcefully. He drinks his beer again and goes back to the basketball game while Natasha tries not to watch him too closely.

 

***

 

Their first real assignment in the field is tougher than Natasha would have expected, but only because she’s not used to dealing with so many people having her back.

“You can’t just disappear,” Clint hisses in exasperation when he finds her hiding behind a concrete wall, taking on her own crop of AIM agents. He yanks her out of view as she starts to move forward, and Natasha muscles away from him.

“What? Afraid I’m going to find a hot AIM guy to partner with?”

Clint grits his teeth, his cheek muscles straining. “That wasn’t what I was going for. This is SHIELD, Natasha. We’re partners. You can’t just go off and do your own thing. There are consequences for me and for everyone else on the team.”

“And what if I’m protecting _you_?” Natasha asks pointedly. “I should follow orders if people have a gun at your head or the heads of the other people I’m supposed to protect?”

Clint sighs and glances at the men running around to the left of him, just out of sight. “Would it make you feel better to shoot someone right now?”

Natasha looks up in surprise, and Clint cracks a wry grin.

“Fine. No killing. But you can put a bullet in their leg and I won’t tell Fury it was intentional.”

When they go out for the second time, things run marginally better. Natasha gets a little more used to remembering there’s someone aside from herself and Clint in the field -- at least, she doesn’t run off to try to follow her own leads without letting Clint know that she’s thinking of doing so. After a month of working together, she falls into SHIELD easily and falls into Clint’s partnership even more easily, and she gets used to using comms and radios and calling out warnings and helping someone if they need extraction while they’re along for the ride.

What she doesn’t get used to are the people who look at her when she comes back bruised and bloody, the people who give her _those_ looks, the ones that make it clear they wonder how she’s able to even complete a mission while working with Clint. They don’t approach her, but she can tell that they want to. Natasha figures they’re probably concocting fantasies in their minds about all the scandalous things they’ve done so far.

She doesn’t tell Clint that it bothers her, mostly because it doesn’t. Natasha’s never cared much about what people thought of her or her relationships, and the only person whose opinions she does care about is Clint. And Clint seems downright immune to the fact that people think he’s some sort of Greek God with a bow.

“I don’t get it,” she says one day while they’re preparing to ship out. She presses on her widows bites to make sure they’re charged. “Why does everyone think you’re such a hot shot?”

“Beats me,” Clint answers. “I’ve only dated about five of them.”

“You’ve --” Natasha stops in the middle of adjusting her gun holster. “Seriously?”

“Not for _that_ long,” Clint says hurriedly, as if he hasn’t realized what he’s said and wants to take it back. Natasha arches an eyebrow, and Clint makes a face.

“I never took them home! I swear. Just took them to dinner and stuff. Y’know, casual dating.”

The admission bothers her, and she has no idea why. She didn’t _like_ Clint. Sure, she liked him as a partner, and as a friend, but she wasn’t doodling his name on the bathroom wall like some lovesick teenager the way half of SHIELD seemed to be. She knows she wouldn’t care if someone else wanted to get into bed with him, because she certainly could never imagine herself sleeping with him. She’d be more pissed if he decided one day he was working with someone else, showing _them_ the shittiest bars around town.

“Hey, what’s up?”

Clint’s pushing on her leg, and Natasha realizes she’s lost both her train of thought and her concentration.

“Nothing,” Natasha replies, getting up. “Come on, Hawkeye. We’re gonna be late. And I’m not explaining that it was because I couldn’t stop looking into your eyes.”

 

***

 

By all accounts, Cambodia is a successful mission. They get in and out with minimal injuries, save for a few knife slashes and, in Clint’s case, one cracked rib that Medical binds before he’s sent home with some painkillers. Natasha only lets herself worry a little bit, because she knows Clint’s more than capable of taking care of himself. When he says he’ll be okay with sleep and medicine, she’s inclined to believe him, given that she’s watched him walk off a broken ankle before. Truthfully, Clint’s track record with injuries was bizarre -- he could finish a mission with a concussion and not complain, but if he had a fever or a cold, he was the most miserable person in the world.

Natasha hugs him briefly before he leaves, and then stays at SHIELD to finish debriefing papers, which she delivers to Fury close to midnight. When she drops the papers off on his desk, he looks up in surprise and shakes his head.

“Romanoff. For god’s sake, go home. You’ve done enough for today.”

She does, forgoing the option of a SHIELD car for a yellow cab, and when she walks into her apartment, she immediately bristles. She flicks on the light; nothing seems out of place that she can see, but she still feels strange, like she’s crawling out of her own skin. Natasha takes a few deep breaths to clear her head and then checks the wounds she’s sustained, changing the bandage on one that’s started to bleed a little more. Then she marches to the kitchen, pours a large glass of wine, and tries to relax on her couch.

It doesn’t work.

Natasha gives herself another hour to talk herself out of what she’s thinking before she leaves her apartment again, taking the subway all the way down to Bed-Stuy.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t -- did I wake you up?”

Clint answers the door looking like he’s dead to the world, but his eyes narrow and Natasha notices he comes awake a little more when he realizes she’s standing there.

“Nat?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeats, because she suddenly doesn’t know why she’s here, even though she thinks part of her does. “I couldn’t -- I couldn’t sleep.”

Clint looks concerned and opens the door wider. Natasha steps inside, realizing it’s the first time she’s been in his apartment. It’s small, like he had explained, a kitchen area separated with a small bar table, a couch, and two rooms in the rear of the apartment that Natasha supposes are a bedroom and bathroom, or maybe a bedroom and a closet.

“How are you feeling?”

Clint shrugs with a grimace. “Okay, I guess. The painkillers are helping. Worst thing is the movement.” He eyes her carefully. “Everything okay?”

Natasha nods, even though the reaction feels like a lie. “Yeah. I just, um. I didn’t want to be alone for awhile.”

Clint runs a hand through his hair, making it stick straight up in a million different directions. “You’re welcome to crash here if you want. We have the morning off, anyway.”

“You don’t mind?”

Clint stares at her in confusion. “Nat, you’re my partner. Of course I don’t mind.”

Natasha immediately feels comforted, and she watches as Clint fumbles around his apartment, pulling a blanket and a few pillows from the bedroom. He puts them on the couch and then glances at the bathroom.

“I don’t have any clothes that would probably fit you, but if you want to grab one of my gym shirts or something, you can. Bathroom’s over there, I’ll try not to wake you in the morning if I get up early but fair warning I kind of can’t control my sleep schedule --”

“Clint?”

He stops with one foot towards the bedroom. “What’s wrong, Nat?”

“Can we talk?”

Clint rubs his eyes tiredly. “Now?”

Natasha winces at the way his body deflates, as if he’s realizing he’s not going to get back to sleep so quickly after all. “Please?” She sits down on the couch, draping the blanket over her legs, and Clint joins her.

“Okay.” He settles back against the cushion, groaning as he stretches. “Tell me what’s bothering you about the mission.”

“About --” Natasha’s not used to being read so easily, and the question jars her. “The mission?”

“C’mon, Nat,” he says, shifting so that he’s lying down as much as he can. “You show up here in the middle of the night after a child abduction case, you claim everything is fine, but you don’t wanna be alone. What’s bothering you?”

Natasha leans against him, relishing in the warmth of his body against her own while being careful of his injury. “We’ve never dealt with kids before.”

“No,” Clint agrees. “I mean, I have. But we haven’t, as partners.”

“She didn’t deserve to be taken,” Natasha continues, her voice shaking. “She had nothing to do with that guy who wanted to experiment on her. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Clint puts a hand on her knee. “We saved her, remember? We found the guy who was running the secret lab, and we even found out who he was reporting to back in the Ukraine. We got her out of there before he hurt her.”

“We almost didn’t,” Natasha says quietly. “I almost didn’t.”

“Huh?” Clint manages to turn his head in her direction. “What do you mean?”

“In the Red Room,” Natasha says in the same quiet voice. “Before I escaped. I almost didn’t make it out. If I hadn’t made it out, I would have died in there, and I haven’t….it’s been awhile,” she finishes, her voice dropping off.

Clint hugs her more tightly. “You’re safe,” he says, his voice gruff and kind. “I promise.”

She feels safe. It’s nice here, alone in his apartment, far away from the eyes of everyone else who think that if she’s hugging him, she _has_ to be attracted to him. Clint makes her feel safe in the way he always has, and she closes her eyes and tries to relax herself to the sound of his shallow breathing.

When she wakes up, she’s stiff and sore and alone on the couch, and morning sun is pouring through the skylight. The cushions are dented heavily beneath her and out of curiosity, she gets up and wanders towards the bedroom, just to make sure. When she pushes open the door, she notices that there’s no one inside and that the bed only has the mark of one person having slept in it, the covers thrown to one side.

 _Went for bagels, be back. Feel free to take some coffee_ , reads the note she finds on the bar. Natasha takes the large purple mug he’s left out for her, and is halfway through her coffee when he finally returns.

“Oh good, you’re up.”

Natasha suddenly feels embarrassed as the memories of the previous night flood back, and she drinks more to hide the flush she can feel creeping up her face. She hates the fact that she was so vulnerable and she hates that she just opened up like that about her past; even if he was her partner, the whole situation makes her feel like she’s weak.

“Look, about last night --”

“It’s fine,” Clint says with a wave of his hand. “You needed to be with someone and you were shaken up. I get it.”

Natasha nods, grateful that she doesn’t have to explain herself. “Did you, um. Did you stay on the couch?”

Clint hesitates and then starts taking bagels out of a large bag. “Yeah. I mean, you fell asleep and then I fell asleep and I figured it wasn’t worth getting up.” She notices he’s avoiding her gaze and she wants to say something, but she’s too tired and hungry to push it.

“Thank you,” she says instead, and Clint smiles.

“Anytime, partner.”

 

***

 

A couple weeks after the Hulk lays waste to most of Harlem, Clint comes to see her, joining her on the balcony at her apartment, which overlooks the Manhattan Bridge and parts of Brooklyn.

“Seems the Incredible Hulk did a bunch of damage,” Clint says as he leans over the ledge. Natasha looks at him, askance.

“That’s what they’re calling him now? Incredible?”

“Eh.” Clint sighs. “I mean, he’s kind of big and huge and green. I get it.”

Natasha sighs; she had steered clear of the news, mostly because it hadn’t been her issue and it hadn’t been Clint’s issue, either, and she had wanted to distance herself from everything going on in the world. Truthfully, she knew that once the Hulk had been subdued, Fury would be back on their tail with another mission or another assignment. She had to admit she’d been enjoying the downtime. Sure enough, Clint puts a file down on the ledge.

“Budapest,” he says before she can ask what the hell he’s giving her. “Level Seven assignment.”

Natasha glances at him. “They’re giving us Level Seven assignments?”

“I think we’ve been doing them anyway,” Clint admits, and Natasha realizes she can’t refute that. Over the past few years, the missions they’d taken on had become more and more dangerous.

“So what’s waiting for us in Budapest?”

“Probably really good food.” Clint throws her a smile as he leans forward, looking out over the sunset as trains rumble along the bridge in the distance, snaking across the sky. “I dunno. Fury said he’d brief us on everything when we came in tomorrow. But he sent over the papers early so we knew what we were getting ourselves into. He’s nice like that.”

Natasha nods, putting her chin in her hands, and Clint frowns.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Why do you always ask me if I’m okay?” Natasha asks in frustration, whirling around and leaning back against the balcony.

Clint cringes. “Forget it,” he says, shaking his head. “Just...I dunno. The whole Hulk thing. I wanted to make sure. That’s all.”

“I was nowhere near that fiasco,” Natasha reminds him, waving her hands around. “I was in Puerto Rico sunbathing, remember? You called me at least twice and interrupted my massage.”

Clint huffs out a laugh. “Yeah,” he says in a tone that implies he’s backing off. “Okay, you wanna order takeout for dinner, then? I think they just put a bunch of new movies On Demand.”

When aliens invade New York, Natasha will whip out her gun and start shooting and tell Clint, “this is just like Budapest all over again.” She’ll remember leaning over him, shielding him with her body while flames licked at her skin, and barely getting out alive. She’ll say it because she’ll remember how he finally came out of his unconscious state by trying to hit on her, which she couldn’t help but laugh at, despite her terrified feelings that he had been hurt too badly to ever wake up. Which is why she’s not entirely surprised at his response.

“You and I remember Budapest very differently.”

They don’t talk about Budapest. He doesn’t tell her that there had been some sort of emotional declaration in his words, and she doesn’t tell him how worried she’d been about losing him. She focuses on other missions, forgets about it, but she can’t stop wondering if he forgets, too.

 

***

 

“Is this love, Agent Romanoff?”

Loki’s words cut deep. But not because she realizes Clint spilled all her secrets and then some, the hospital fire and Drakov’s daughter and who knows what else.

Loki’s lips curl around the words and Natasha will forever remember that -- she’ll remember that sneer more than she’ll remember the terror of running from the Hulk, or the fear of killing her brainwashed partner. Because love wasn’t what she had for Clint, was it? She’d never loved someone before. She’d cared about people, Clint included, Clint probably most of all. She’d wanted to sacrifice things for people. But _love_ was something Natasha associated with gooey mushy feelings, hearts and flowers and senseless babbling and sex dreams. Natasha never ever thought of Clint in that way, even though she _does_ love him --

“Love is for children. I owe him a debt.”

When she bites down on his wrist, she thinks of all the people at SHIELD who giggled over the fact that she was working with Clint because he was apparently the SHIELD version of _The Bachelor_. She thinks of pulling him from burning wreckage in Budapest, of showing up at his door after a compromising mission, of coffee and bagels and being cuddled on the couch, of four dollar beers and weekend getaways to exotic places for no other reason than to piss Fury off that they were going off the grid to get away from working seven days a week with no breaks, of sparring and laughing over stupid television shows.

When she flips him over her arm, she thinks of Loki’s words.

When she punches him out on the helicarrier, she realizes she doesn’t know what she’d do if she couldn’t get him out.

When he looks at her, blue clearing into grey as he croaks out the word _Tasha_ , she finally understands what the women at SHIELD mean when they talk about how it can be so beautiful to look into Clint’s eyes.

And fuck, she knows she’ll never want to sleep with him, but she might actually love him.

 

***

 

Two months after Loki gets sent back into space ( _and good fucking riddance_ , Natasha thinks, watching as Thor blasts his brother back into the cloudless blue sky), Natasha goes to see Clint. She announces herself by walking forcefully across the balcony of her former apartment in Manhattan, and from the way his shoulders flinch, she knows he’s heard her approach.

“Took you long enough.”

“Really, Clint?” She comes up next to him and looks out at the sky, remembering all the times they’ve stood here, looking at the view. “This is only the first and last place I’d think to look for you when I can’t find you at home.”

Clint smiles wistfully. “You were purposely giving me time to disappear?”

“I figured I owed you as much.” Natasha leans on her elbows and tries to look at him without being overly suspicious. His face is lined and drawn, tells that he’s barely been sleeping, something she already knows. Her eyes sweep over his arms and and neck, looking for traces of self-harm. Finding none that are visible, she breathes a quiet sigh of relief. “You don’t have to go back, you know.”

“I want to,” Clint says, pushing his fingers into the concrete of the balcony. “But I can’t.”

“Then give it more time,” Natasha says. “Don’t worry about forcing it. We’ll still all be here when you decide you want to come back.”

“Or maybe you’ll replace me,” Clint says self-deprecatingly. Natasha grinds her teeth together in an effort to stop herself from saying something she doesn’t want to.

“Shut the fuck up,” she snaps finally. “ _No one_ is replacing you. Not when I went through hell on earth to get you back.” She turns abruptly and walks away from him, and is halfway across the roof when he reaches for her arm.

“I’m sorry,” he says brokenly, and she tenses when she realizes his wrist is still red and healing from the bite marks her teeth have made.

“You think you have to be sorry,” Natasha says as she turns around to meet his tired eyes. “What Loki did to you wasn’t your fault. Remember what I told you?”

“This is nothing we were ever trained for,” Clint murmurs. Natasha puts a gentle palm against his cheek.

“Come on. I think there’s some new movies On Demand, if you want to order in.”

He smiles tentatively and Natasha puts her hand around his waist, squeezing gently. She brings him to her new apartment in Little Italy, orders Chinese and pulls out the couch, and doesn’t even bother to think it’s strange when Clint curls up next to her almost immediately. She lets him rest his head on her chest and she runs his fingers over his scars, trying not to think of how close she came to losing him.

“What do you think they’d think of me now?”

“Huh?” Natasha’s confused, and tears her gaze away from watching Keanu Reeves slo-mo fight his way through _The Matrix_. “Who?”

“All the people who think I’m hot and want to date me. What do you think they’d think of me?”

“I --” Natasha wishes she could say she’s surprised at his question, but the more she thinks about it, the more she’s not surprised at all. It’s basically Clint through and through, insane worry masked by shallow bravado. “I don’t know. Do you think they’d care, as long as they could touch you arms?” She looks over, hoping for a smile, but instead she’s met with a crestfallen face.

“What do _you_ think of me?”

“Clint.” Natasha stops, because there’s something in his eyes that seems like he wants an answer more meaningful than he knows he’s going to get. “You know I understand this. You’re my partner, and if there’s anything that I know, it’s what it feels like to not be in control of your body. I know what it feels like to be responsible for things you don’t remember doing. And since when do you care what I think?”

It’s probably the wrong thing to say, she realizes after the words leave her mouth. She’s been walking the line between tough love and sympathy for the past few weeks, trying to figure out how to treat him. She knew what he was going through, and she knew how he was going to act. He didn’t need to be coddled, but he did need a healthy amount of pushing to make sure that he wasn’t going to fall into a self-deprecation spiral that would destroy him.

And it makes her realize how much she cares about him, and how much she just wants him to go back to the guy he was for so long -- the carefree snarky joking partner, the one who ribbed her about her love for tabasco sauce, the guy who sometimes got lettuce stuck between his teeth.

“I’m sorry,” Natasha says after a moment when his eyes fall. “I know you’re just worried. Let’s finish the movie, okay?”

He doesn’t answer, and when she cuddles up against him again, she tries not to think about how close she came to not having this comfort that she’s always taken for granted.

 

***

 

Before Hydra, before the Winter Soldier, before she even becomes partnered with Steve, Clint meets her at a small bar in Dupont Circle during morning hours, when she can take advantage of going in late and he can take advantage of early happy hour deals.

“Not the worst place in the world to work,” Clint remarks when they finally sit down at a table. “Security at the Triskellion’s gotta be through the roof.” He takes off his sunglasses and Natasha’s relieved to see he looks a little better than he had when they Skyped a few days ago. True, she’d literally woken him out of a nightmare when she called, but she knows that nightmare wasn’t exactly a one-off.

“Nick’s got everything buttoned up,” Natasha agrees. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you firsthand that they’re putting me with Rogers this week. Or so I’ve heard.”

Clint spits out a mouthful of mimosa and Natasha raises an eyebrow in disdain as she reaches for a napkin.

“Why?”

“Well.” Natasha mops up the spit and alcohol, careful not to take notice of his eyes. There’s something that seems akin to jealousy swimming in them, and she only notices the emotion because she’s seen too many other men act the same way when she’s gone undercover and had to play a part. Natasha tries to think about how to answer in a way that won’t set him off, because she can tell he’s more than a little peeved about this development. “You’re not fit to go back into the field right now, even as far as reports go. And there are things that I need to take care of for Fury, and Steve can help with the things I can’t do on my own. Like distracting people so they don’t come and kill me.”

Clint frowns. “How will I know you’re okay?”

“I’ll send a smoke signal,” she says with a small smile. “Come on. You have your own assignment, right?”

“Getting a damn computer chip from a wealthy businessman isn’t exactly a level seven assignment,” Clint grouses. Natasha lays her hands on the table.

“Look. It might not be jumping off a roof in Hong Kong, but it’s _something_ , and it’s a step in proving that you can be okay going out on your own after New York,” she says, reaching for his hand. “That’s what’s important. I need you to be with me, Clint.”

“I am with you!” he replies a little defensively.

Natasha’s lips quirk. “I mean in the future.”

“You finally wanna marry me?” Clint asks with a wink, and Natasha’s stomach thrashes around. She realizes she must have a look on her face that doesn’t seem happy, because Clint immediately reaches forward and grabs her wrist.

“Hey, I didn’t...Nat, you know I didn’t mean that,” he says quickly. “I was just joking. I missed joking with you. Those dumb new recruits only know how to giggle in the hallway when I try to be sarcastic with them.”

“That sounds like the SHIELD I know,” Natasha says with a smile, and Clint smiles back.

“Hey, I’m no expert or anything, but if you thought it was bad being partnered with me, just wait til people find out you’re working with Rogers. Beefcake for days.”

Natasha makes a face, every muscle in her forehead scrunching together as she wrinkles her nose. “Honestly, I’d rather talk about your arms.”

The thing is, Clint’s not wrong. Being partnered with Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, is the second time in her life when she’s forced to walk the halls and endure whispers and giggles and people who stop to ask her what it’s like to work with someone so handsome. The difference, Natasha realizes, is that she’s not close enough with Steve to complain to him about it. Far from being the first person Natasha ever saw or spoke to when she was brought into SHIELD, Clint had clicked with her in a way that she’d never even thought was unusual.

At least this time, she knows she doesn’t want to be close enough to Steve to cuddle with him. It makes it a little easier to shove her feelings away when she’s worried about getting too close to someone again.

 

***

 

“Special delivery,” Natasha says when she knocks on the door of Steve’s room at the hospital. She peeks inside to make sure he’s actually awake, trying not to wince at the bruises and cuts that still line his face from the fight on the helicarrier. Despite his superhuman healing abilities, he had taken so many hits that even his serum couldn’t compensate for almost being beaten to death by the Winter Soldier. Steve smiles, though, grimacing as the stitches along his mouth pull in what must be a painful movement.

“Gum?”

“Sorry,” Natasha says, smiling back as she opens the door wider. “Vending machine was all out.”

“I’ll eat a flash drive, if you’ve got one.”

Natasha laughs quietly. “I don’t think your recently dislocated jaw is up for that.” She holds up a bag. “But I do have fries from Five Guys.”

“I’ll take anything that’s not hospital food,” Steve says gratefully, sitting up carefully in bed. Natasha deposits the bag on his lap and helps him open it.

“How’s Hill?”

“Recovering.” Natasha takes a fry. “How’s Sam?”

“Doing the same.” He picks around a bunch of fries stuck together. “Now that the Hydra thing is out and everything, have you heard from Clint?”

“Yeah,” Natasha says quietly. “He was on a separate mission that didn’t have anything to do with SHIELD or Hydra, thankfully. I told him to stay away for a little while, just until things settle down here. We only took down the helicarriers...we didn’t take down anything else.”

“Cut off one head,” Steve murmurs, suppressing a shudder. “So what’s next? You and Clint gonna go and start over somewhere while the rest of us get back on our feet?”

“What do you mean?” Natasha looks at him in puzzlement, and Steve raises an eyebrow.

“C’mon, Nat. I thought it was obvious. I mean, I know he likes you, but you’ve liked each other for years. I could tell from New York --”

“ _No_ , oh my god no,” Natasha breaks in, slapping his hand away from the fries. “No, Clint’s my partner. He’s someone I’d give my life for and who I care about like a brother, but I’ve never thought of him as someone I’d want to date.”

“And he hasn’t?”

Natasha finds that she can’t answer. She thinks of missions and nights at his apartment, safe warm embraces and a sense of home and kisses on the cheek and knowing that it was _okay_ if she wasn’t fine, because even if she said otherwise, he’d still know enough to care. She thinks of how all of SHIELD had been obsessed with his features, with the fact that he laughed too loudly or smiled crookedly, and the fact that she’d never once thought of working with Clint like _that_ despite the fact that she did like him, and oh god, had she really misread things between them all these years? Or was she refusing to deal with her own feelings so much that she’d convinced herself that she couldn’t like him in _that_ way?

“Clint and I are two sides of the same coin,” Natasha says carefully when she decides to speak. “We come from pasts where it’s not so easy to trust each other. But when you find that one person you can understand, that person becomes your world. And that’s what we’ve always been to each other.” She pauses. “I can’t believe I sound like a Hallmark card right now, but it’s...it’s hard to explain.”

“No,” Steve says. “I get it. Shared life experiences, right?”

Natasha laughs under her breath, breathing a little easier as memories of a rumbling truck in New Jersey come rushing back. Running undercover through a mall, Hydra on their backs. Kissing Steve like it was no problem and feeling nothing and feeling relieved, because after Clint, she had worried maybe she wasn’t normal for not ever feeling like she wanted to make out with him.

“Right.”

 

***

 

Natasha tells Clint to stay away for at least a month, just to make sure that things with Hydra shake out enough so that she doesn’t feel like she’s looking over her shoulder when she returns to New York. She doesn’t quite feel comfortable going back to her apartment, and Clint’s is out of the question considering she knows if she goes there without him, she’ll just feel more out of place. Tony offers her a space in the Tower with him and Pepper and Bruce, until she figures out where she wants to go and how she wants to rebuild the parts of her life SHIELD and Hydra have stolen from her.

So Natasha settles in and tries to figure out how to live a life that’s not tied to SHIELD or assignments or missions, the life she thought she yearned for when took a few days off during the Hulk’s rampage in Harlem. She visits the Central Park Zoo and gets cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery, she rides the subway down to Coney Island and walks the High Line, she visits the World Trade Center Memorial and pays her respects and feels a little guilty that she can’t do the same for the people at SHIELD. She helps Pepper with errands and paperwork and acts as the eye rolling participant when Tony and Bruce try to talk to her about another failed experiment.

The day Clint returns, Natasha’s spent the day in the city running errands and is sitting on the floor on her computer, running scans on old files, when a sharp knock she’d recognize anywhere raps on the door. She smiles to herself but doesn’t turn around.

“So, uh.” There’s the sound of feet shuffling and a bag dropping on the floor. “Tony said I should tell you that your boyfriend is here.” He sighs. “Happy now, JARVIS?”

“ _Immeasurably_ ,” intones the AI from somewhere above them. Natasha’s smile grows bigger.

“Tell him he’s late,” Natasha says, finally turning around. She takes a moment to make sure he looks okay, because his time away from her had been longer than they’d both expected. His hair needs a cut and his beard definitely needs a good shave, and there are bruises and cuts along his arm that she tries not to worry about. But the lines around his eyes are creased from smiling, and Natasha can’t stop herself from getting up and hugging him.

“Do me a favor,” Clint murmurs into her hair as she wraps her arms around his broad waist. “Next time you go off and do Avenger stuff without me, try not to unearth some undercover Nazi agenda, okay? Also, don’t do this straightener thing with your hair. It looks fake and terrible.”

Natasha laughs, the sound muffled by his shirt. “I know Tony’s fridge is stocked with every expensive food known to man, but there’s a new Chinese place that opened on 3rd Avenue, and you wouldn’t believe how many movies are On Demand.”

Five hours later, empty cartons of lo mein and rice littering the plush rug of their suite in the Tower and JARVIS under strict orders to not unlock the door for anyone for the rest of the night no matter what, Natasha’s lying against Clint holding half a bottle of beer. She closes her eyes and breathes in his scent, it feels like the first time she really hugged him after they got news they were going to be partners, the first time she realized how good it felt to be alone, to just enjoy being with Clint without worrying that someone thought she was in love with him.

“I need to ask you something,” she says abruptly, sitting up and letting her hair fall in her face. Clint frowns and takes the beer bottle from her.

“Yeah, shoot.”

“After Hydra…” She bites down on her bottom lip. “Steve said...it’s dumb, but he said he thought you liked me, and that I liked you, but I mean...that’s not…” Natasha trails off and realizes Clint’s entire posture has changed, his spine becoming rigid and fingers closing white-knuckled around the beer bottle.

“Um.” Clint’s voice is hoarse when he responds. “What did you tell him?”

“The truth,” Natasha says simply, not taking her eyes off him. “We’re partners, and we come from places where we know what it means to trust each other in a certain way.” She stops to see if he’ll say anything else, and when he doesn’t, she decides to just say it anyway. “Clint, do you _like_ me?”

Clint puts his drink on the floor and puts his hands on his knees, looking sheepish. “It’s, uh.” He swallows hard. “It’s something I was actually thinking about while I was away. I mean, with Hydra and all...I wanted you to know how I felt, and I was worried you wouldn’t feel the same way, or that you were just going to disappoint me or something, and then I just never brought it up, but --” He runs a hand through his hair, gripping the ends with so much force Natasha thinks he might pull the strands straight out of his head. “Shit, I’m sorry. Nat. I’m sorry, please don’t look at me like that, even if I like you that’ll never change anything between us --”

“Clint.” Natasha has no idea what her face looks like in this moment, but she knows she has to be giving off an expression that makes him worried she’s going to run for the hills. Natasha sighs, long and loud. “Clint, I’m...I’m asexual.”

“You’re --” Clint stops and then barks out a laugh, his whole body shaking with nervous laughter and relief. “Oh god, I can’t believe I didn’t...all these years?”

“For as long as I can remember,” Natasha admits slowly. “It took me awhile to realize what this was -- these feelings of liking people but not...not really liking them the way I was told I should like them. I think it goes back to my Red Room days and being scared of connecting with people, learning to turn my feelings off...and then you.” She shrugs shyly and Clint furrows his brow.

“Me?”

“I didn’t know if I liked you,” Natasha says. “I mean, I knew I liked you, and I cared about you, and you made me feel safe...you still do.” She scoots closer to him. “I thought, maybe...I don’t know. Maybe if I was normal, or if I acted normal and tried to forget my feelings, I could have something real. And I guess, just once, I wanted to feel like someone liked me because…” She blinks against eyes that are suddenly swimming with water. “I messed it all up.”

“You didn’t mess it up,” Clint says instantly, closing the distance between them. He puts a hand on her cheek. “Nat, I love you. I’ll always love you, and it doesn’t matter whether or not you want to sleep with me. Love doesn’t have to be a romantic thing. You’re stuck with me.”

“Don’t bribe me,” Natasha grumbles, and Clint laughs.

“Okay, well, how about this? We put on another movie, get into bed, and just cuddle. No sex, no jokes about me trying to marry you. I’ll burp the alphabet just to gross you out and then we can tell Tony that we had a total makeout session when he asks, because I’m pretty sure he’s convinced we’re already sleeping together.”

“Tell me about it,” Natasha says, before looking at him worriedly. “You’re okay with that? Just...you know. Being together, knowing there’s going to be nothing?”

“Are _you_ okay with that?” Clint asks seriously.

Natasha stares at him, remembering the first time she realized she really did love him, when eyes that were previously blue looked into her own and softened with something she knew she’d never seen in anyone else. She smiles.

“Yeah. I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me or yell at on tumblr: @isjustprogress.


End file.
